


In the Inbetween

by pie_is_good



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:31:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pie_is_good/pseuds/pie_is_good
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war had ended. Rachel was dead. Ax had gone home.</p><p>And I was left on Earth. Alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Inbetween

**Author's Note:**

  * For [primeideal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/gifts).



My name is Tobias.

The war with the Yeerks ended. The general consensus is that I’ve lived my life since entirely as a red-tailed hawk, which I suppose is mostly true. I do spent a lot of time as a hawk these days, and I certainly did so a lot at first. In the days before Rachel's funeral, I didn't morph once. I spent a few minutes a day scouring the news - TV through windows, newspapers on park benches. That's how I knew when to be there.

Before I got there, I hadn't been planning on taking her ashes with me. I'd planned on swooping down, saying my good-bye, and leaving. But then I saw her final resting place, and it just wasn't right. It didn’t feel like her. Rachel might have enjoyed the spectacle, but this wasn't where she belonged, forever. 

I looked at Rachel's mom, never gladder that my hawk eyes didn't know how to cry, with the softest expression a hawk could give. She looked back at me, and I wanted to look away. The pain of losing a child on a woman's face is not something I ever want to see again. But I couldn't look away, not until she told me it was okay. Who was I to steal the ashes of someone that I...well, it's not very important. Not anymore. But I wouldn't take them without permission.

Eventually, she nodded, and I grasped both handles of the urn and took off. I don't know how I managed it, but I did. Maybe Rachel gave me strength.

I had to take several breaks, but I did eventually take her to where I wanted to go.  
The meadow. Not just any meadow, but my meadow. The one I had lived in since I became a _nothlit_. I wasn't planning on living there anymore. Too easy for someone to find me. It wouldn't be long until the whole world knew our entire story, and I couldn’t risk someone finding me. They’d come to see the meadow where I hunted, or maybe they’d come to see Ax’s scoop. If I was there, someone, eventually, would notice that I wasn’t a real hawk but Tobias the Animorph. 

Another hawk would probably move into my territory once I left, and people would take pictures, hoping it was me. It wouldn't be me. I would never come here again. Not after today.

I landed in the grass near the edge of the meadow, a place I did not usually go, and I morphed to human. I couldn't do this as a hawk. For one, talons were not great for this. Sometimes you just need an opposable thumb.

But mostly, this was the last version of me Rachel had ever seen. I'd morphed for her on the bridge of the Pool Ship in her last moments, and that is how I would spend my last moments with her. She always wanted us to be human together, I think, and I know a part of me wanted that, too. Ironic that I’d be the one to be human last.

I knelt down in the grass on knees that should have felt familiar, but they didn’t. Nothing about my human body had felt familiar to me in a very long time. For the first time, I let tears happen. The hawk had protected me from them out of sheer inability, but the human boy that I became could not stop the tears.

I opened the urn and stared at what was left of Rachel, not sure what to do.  
I thought, maybe, I should say something to her, but it didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn't great at my human voice anymore, anyway, and my mind was blank, confused, empty. I thought maybe I should have told her that I love her, but she knew, I hoped.

There really wasn’t anything to say. I’m sure people at the memorial had said it all much better than I ever could have.

So I just said one thing as I spread her ashes.

"Good-bye."

***

The next few months, I was a hawk. Nothing else. I'd moved near the Hork Bajir colony, at least some of the time. I didn't contact Jake. I couldn't face him. Marco was settling into a new life, one of a celebrity that would be scrutinized forever. I couldn’t associate myself with that, at least not yet.

 

Cassie...well, Cassie came to see the Hork Bajir a lot these days. I never swooped in and said hi, but I couldn’t help but watch when I saw her. She still used her bird morphs to get into the woods. Why wouldn't you forgo hiking when you could fly? So it was inevitable that one day, she would notice me.

I'd spent these last months, sleeping and hunting and preening and soaring through the sky. A hawk doesn’t have much else to do. I watched the Hork Bajir, sometimes, but I never said hello. But Cassie did. Cassie chased me the first time she saw me. She was probably there on an important diplomatic mission, and she ignored all of that for me. 

At first, she tried to speak. I didn’t answer. She’d eventually give up, going about the day she had planned. 

A few weeks later, she just flew alongside me, though still far away. Just like we had when we traveled to missions. She didn’t try to say anything. She just flew. I’d dive; she’d dive. We rose up into the sky together.

I liked that. It was nice to have a friend. It had been so long since I’d had one.

Eventually, we talked. I surprised myself by starting it, but it didn’t last long. I almost didn’t remember how to have a conversation with someone, my sentences short and awkward. When it was over, she said she would find me again. She didn’t think I should isolate myself the way I had been. 

I told her I could go somewhere else, and she wouldn’t be able to find me. But she didn't think I would leave where I was, far away from people and able to watch over the Hork Bajir and my namesake.

She was right.

One day, she approached me as herself instead of in morph. As soon as I saw her, I suddenly wanted to do something I hadn’t done in months: be human. There was only one problem. I wasn’t ready to be me.

Rachel was the last time I had been me, and I couldn't face it. Not yet. I certainly couldn't face the people who would recognize me. My face had been everywhere. Not the way that Marco's had, Jake's had, and even Cassie's had, but it was there.  
Someone would see me, and I’d run away. Better to remain an anonymous bird.

I remembered morphing a sailor on the aircraft carrier, not that long ago in time but oh, so long ago in my heart. We always said we wouldn't morph other humans without permission, but I didn't think it would matter. He may have even died. I’d already morphed him once. I hoped he wouldn’t mind if I used his body again.

So I morphed him. I didn’t tell Cassie. I didn’t want to see someone I knew. I just wanted to be human, you know? I went to the nearest city, stole a pair of sandals and a watch, and I morphed. I morphed into someone that wasn't me, and I looked ridiculous in spandex shorts and a cheap pair of flip-flops that were all I could easily steal. It was enough. I knew that stealing was something we tried not to do, but at this point, I kind of felt like the universe owed me one. This was easily the least it could give me.

I took a deep breath, and I walked into a library. I don't really know why I picked a library. I guess it seemed like a place I could go for free. Somewhere that I wouldn’t be noticed. I didn't have any money, though I'm sure I could have gotten some. I could have asked Marco or stolen some, but I didn't really need it. I was a hawk. All I needed was to find a tree to perch in and a field full of mice.

I sat down in the coziest chair I could find, though cozy was almost a foreign concept to me. I remember cold nights where Rachel had made up a drawer for me, a blanket folded up inside to act as a little hawk bed. The hawk didn’t like cozy. At first, I was uncomfortable, but then I started to read.

I demorphed in the bathroom and remorphed when my time was nearly up, and I went back to reading.

I kept this up until the library closed. I hadn't even read anything in particular. I'd just started reading whatever books had been abandoned on the table next to my chair that the librarians hadn't yet cleared the books from.. No one seemed to notice me. Sometimes they noticed the clothes, I guess, but once they realized I was just reading and not doing anything strange, they went right back to ignoring me.

When the library closed, I morphed in an alley, stuffing my watch and my sandals behind a dumpster. They would be fine there.

I came back the next day, and the day after that. I came back every day for a long time.

***

The next time I saw Cassie, I told her what I had been doing. She smiled at me. I might have even smiled back, but beaks aren't that great at smiling.

She suggested I go to school. She offered to help. She'd met some people that could get me into a school, no questions asked, as whatever name with whatever face I wanted. I hadn’t told her that I’d been morphing someone else, but that was Cassie. Somehow she knew, and I think she even understood.

I told her no, but I saw her smile ever so slightly as she left that day. She knew I would say yes, eventually.

I think I did, too.

The next week, she came back. 

With brochures.

And so I became someone else, at least temporarily, and I went to learn. I didn't even have a major. I just wanted something to do. The hawk wasn't enough. Rachel would be proud of me, I think. I kept it up for two semesters, a quarter of the way to a degree in something, I suspected, though I still wasn’t sure in what.

But someone finally noticed the morphing in the bathroom between classes. Someone realized that I was an Animorph, and I bolted. I just flew out of the bathroom. Someone opened a door for me, and I never went back. I'm not really sure why, when I think about it. No one had seen the face of the body I'd stolen.  
They'd only seen a few feathers under a stall door, and with all the liberated Human-Controllers that had morphing ability, it wasn’t something limited entirely to the Animorphs anymore. I could have continued.

But I didn't. I stayed a hawk. I kept in contact with Cassie this time, and eventually Toby, but I never went back to the human world. I was a hawk from then on, scared back into forests and meadows until the day that Jake came.

I had never planned to speak to him again. I almost flew away when I saw him, but I couldn't.

Not when he told me the person who I'd cared for the most as a friend was in danger. Family, really. My uncle. The closest thing I’d ever had to a real family. My _shorm_.

Rachel would have gone. I had to go.

So I went. Back to the life of an Animorph.

Maybe it's what I needed more than anything, I thought as I boarded the ship with Marco and Jake.

Friends.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to write fix-it fic for 54 for you. But I read the last 10 books of the series for the first time in a long time, and I just couldn't. But #54 was just stuck in my brain after that, and I thought I'd give you a peek into what Tobias's life was after the war. Hope you enjoyed! Happy Yuletide!


End file.
